


put a spine in your back

by slybrunette



Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-25
Updated: 2011-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post 'chuck vs. the gobbler'. there was this small fraction of a second where she just knew how this was going to end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put a spine in your back

She can’t stop thinking about it.

There was this small fraction of a second where she saw that mechanism begin to give, metal grating against metal, and the platform swaying unevenly, and she instinctively knew how it was going to end. Relief had given way to something worse than terror – helplessness. Forty feet up and unable to do a damn thing to stop it, and all she could think of was that he promised he would be okay and John Casey had never failed to keep a promise.

And then he plummeted, hit flat on his back and didn’t move after impact. She might have said a prayer, in those five seconds before she turned right into the car crash that was Chuck’s hurt disbelief mixing with a bitter kind of fear. Sarah didn’t pray. Sarah didn’t believe in anything much but her own two hands for a very, very long time before that belief was able to grow to encompass the people closest to her. But the silent plea that cropped up unbidden was all instinct and, as she blinked away the tiny pinpricks starting in the corners of her eyes, she hoped for things like luck and promises kept, things that so rarely exist in this world – her world.

Chuck only sends her that one message and she puts distance between them – both physical and emotional – with a lump in her throat, but, even in the face of the potential destruction of their relationship from the inside out, it’s not him that she’s thinking about in between the brief snatches of sleep that she manages to grab hold of, it’s the man on the ground.

It’s the man who simply can’t fail her now. Not after she failed him so spectacularly.

Not after everything.


End file.
